My grandma was born in Mexico, but is a US resident. She tried to take the citizenship test in English, without being able to speak English. I remember helping her study when I was seven years old, “Abuelita, who was the first president of the United States?” to which she would reply “George Washington”. She didn’t really know who George Washington was, or what the question even meant, but she know the words “George Washington” were the answer to the question “Who was the first president of the United States?” The citizenship test is filled with whos, whats and wheres and most citizens born in the USA cannot pass it. She splits her time between the US and Mexico, my uncle following along about half of the time. At the beginning of May, they made the two day journey on a bus. My uncle had to get a tourist’s visa at the border, but when my grandma went to the office, he was denied one. The official’s reasoning? “I run things here.”
My grandma demanded a real reason, even saying “it’s not like he’s coming over to work!” She showed the official my uncle’s disability card which says he is mentally incapable to work. It also says he was to be with one of two adults at all times. My grandma or my aunt who lives in Mexico. The official still wouldn’t give them a visa. My uncle was on the verge of tears when my grandma stepped over to the next official to try again. They had to wait for everyone on their commuter bus to finish before being called back up. A day later, my uncle was watching TV in my kitchen, but this is not an isolated incident, this is a result of the stigma created by years of scapegoating, bandwagoning, and xenophobia.
The most popular grievance against undocumented immigrants is that they are a drain on our economy. According to CNN, about 50-75% of the 11 million undocumented immigrants filed taxes in 2007 and are paying about $11.64 billion in taxes annually. Undocumented immigrants pay way more into social benefits than they ever plan to receive, they’ve paid about $100 billion to Social Security over the past 10 years. And they receive no money back. They are not eligible for welfare. By the 1996 Welfare Law, not even a documented immigrant can qualify for benefits if they have been in the US for less that five years. Immigrants who aren’t citizens are about 25% less likely to sign up for Medicaid than their birthright citizen counterparts. The reason they don’t even apply is the fear of being deported.
The fact that immigrants are undocumented is enough for people to condemn them. This comes from the misconception that it is easy for people to be granted documented immigration into the US. Under current law, it is almost impossible to get a visa in a timely manner. Some people in Mexico have been waiting over 20 years for their family sponsored visas. Some of those waiting are each of my mother’s eight brothers and sisters and their children born in Mexico. My cousin has not married the father of her children because she is afraid of losing eligibility for a visa. But in European countries, it is much easier to get a visa than in Mexico, broader Latin America or parts of Asia.
For Latinos, the problem begins with being labeled Mexican because your last name sounds like you can roll your r’s. Most immigrants have an expectation to go back to their mother country. That dream is so much more realistic for Mexicans because Mexico is right there. In the mid 1900s, this was a major reason that many Mexican immigrants did not even apply for citizenship- they saw it as fruitless. So when every Latino is seen as Mexican, their place in this country is seen as temporary.
This is not a Latino issue, it is an issue that immigrants of color face. It is an issue that many white immigrants do not face. But right now it is the Latino population that is getting called out, it is the Latino population that bears the wounds of a president elect firing shot after shot just so he could get some votes, so it is the Latino population that I speak for today.
The United States loves calling itself an immigrant nation, as long as those immigrants are white.
Donald Trump, deporter in Chief elect, married not one, but two, immigrants. He is the son of a Scottish immigrant. He, along with many of his followers say they support legal immigration, but do little in aiding Latino immigrants get access those visas. The United States loves calling itself an immigrant nation, as long as those immigrants are white. And it’s not fair. It’s not fair that the white population in the U.S. gets to forget that they too are descended from immigrants. Immigrants that took this land from the Mexicans they now try to keep out. And I don’t mean forgetting the culture you’re from, I mean not getting treated as “other”. Because if you’re white and you step into the U.S., you won’t have people shocked at how good your English is or offended that you didn’t learn English before coming to “America”, and being confused because you never left the Americas. These double standards are the reason that the US is going crazy, these double standards are the reason that things have gotten so out of hand and these double standards are the reason that the largest ethnic group in the US is scared about the next four years. These double standards are the reason that I cried when I realized Donald Trump had become president.
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